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Civilifications

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Defeating the Voters
May 14, 2019
On the state level, legislative power brokers are often at war against the plainly expressed will of the voters themselves.

Twentieth-Century Man
April 30, 2019
The political commentator William Schneider has often quoted, over the years, a comment he attributes to the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. When an aspirational youth wrote to Disraeli for advice about how to succeed in public life, the Great Man purportedly responded ...

The Abominations of Congress
April 16, 2019
More than twenty years ago Charles Lewis noted in The Buying of the Congress that for most Americans the national legislature is “a distant abomination.” You can put the emphasis on “distant”—fewer than half the citizenry can name their representative and even fewer ...

The Teflon Con
March 26, 2019
What is it that makes some leaders, and not others, seem invulnerable to scandal or charges of corruption?